Prince of Bryanae (Bryanae Series) Read online

  “If he only knew.”

  That got his attention. “What do you mean by that?”

  “None of—”

  “—my business, I know, I know. Come on, Willow. You have to open up to somebody, some day.”

  “Oh?” Willow arched an eyebrow. “And you think it ought to be you, is that it?”

  Snyde blushed at her rebuke. “I guess not.”

  “I don’t understand you,” she said. “You were so cruel to me back in Bryanae, and now you seem so gentle.” How odd: Tamlevar had gone from kind to cruel, and Snyde had taken the opposite route.

  “I suspect that I’m less of a jerk than you thought of me then, and not as nice as you think me now.”

  Willow gave a non-committal grunt.

  “Ah, well,” he said, turning away. “I’m going to see to the men. We need to get moving soon.”

  “I slept with his father and nearly killed his mother,” Willow blurted. “Tamlevar’s, I mean.”

  “What?”

  Willow wanted to clamp her hand over her mouth, to pull the words back. What in the name of the Icy Inferno had possessed her to say that?

  “Forget it.”

  Snyde grinned broadly. “Oh, no way! You can’t leave me hanging like that. You have to tell me.”

  The eyebrow arched again. “Do I?”

  “Yes,” Snyde said, laughing.

  “If you tell anybody any of this I’ll—”

  “—kill me. Yes, I know, Willow. Now, out with it.”

  She glanced around, but nobody was watching her. Or if they were, it was surreptitious.

  She shrugged. Why not?

  “Once, before Tamlevar was born, his father visited Bryanae.”

  “Was he … you know, like him?”

  “No, he’s human. Tamlevar’s mother is not.”

  “Go on. Was he a man of rank?”

  Willow half-smiled. “You might say that. Suffice it to say, that I was assigned as his temporary bodyguard. That seemed to amuse him, and he delighted in dragging me to socially awkward events and watching me try to blend in while remaining able to defend him should the need arise. Fancy-dress balls, concerts, and so on. Anyway, on the way back from the theater, we were attacked.”

  “And of course, you saved his life.”

  Again, the half-smile. “He was competent enough with a blade. He held his own.”

  “Oh ho! The plot thickens!”

  Willow shrugged. “After that, he wanted to take me to his bed, and I let him. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Details. I want details!”

  She ignored him. “After that, I met Elidon, Tamlevar’s mother. We found ourselves on opposing sides, and when she made an insulting remark, I ran her through.”

  I don’t know what’s made you like this. I don’t know what has hurt you so badly, made you this embittered. But I still sense the humanity within you.

  “What did she say?” Snyde said.

  “What?” Willow was lost in her own memories. She remembered the slippery feeling as her rapier had slid into Elidon’s belly. The look of horror and betrayal on the black woman’s face.

  “What did she say to make you lose your temper?”

  “Nothing.”

  Snyde rolled his eyes again. “Of course.”

  He returned his gaze to Tamlevar and Tee-Ri. “Does he know?”

  “No.”

  She thought she caught a gleam in Snyde’s eyes, but she wasn’t sure what it meant.

  Then he chuckled. “You know, but for the winds of fate, you could have been Tamlevar’s mother.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said, her blood turning to ice water.

  “What?” His eyes widened, the mirth within them drowned.

  “Parenting is sacred to elves, Snyde. An elven woman is only fertile once every fifty years or so. The birth of a new elven child is sufficient occasion for celebration throughout the kingdom. I’m told that the occasion of my birth sparked a festival that lasted a year. Motherhood is sacred above all else to elves. Don’t ever forget it. That’s what makes what was done to those poor elven men cruel beyond what words can describe: to take away all possibility of children …” She shuddered.

  “Yet, you and your mother …”

  Her eyes narrowed to near-slits. “Yes, me and my mother. Queen Tee-Ri has set a sterling example of motherhood, don’t you think?”

  Silence filed the space between them. That gap was expanding. Snyde wouldn’t meet her eyes. He watched Tamlevar’s ditch-digging some more.

  “This is going to end badly,” he said.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Her voice was harsh, expressing fear and anger she didn’t even know she felt. She yanked Snyde’s shoulder, spun him to face her. “I’m not going to live through this. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. I was born on this island, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to die here, too.”

  Snyde took a deep breath, held it a moment, then exhaled forcefully. “You should go back to the ship with Rogan. Let me take care of this. I think you’ve endured more than any wo—” He caught her pointed glance, and amended what he had been about to say. “—soldier ought be expected to. You don’t have anything to prove, Willow. Go back to the ship and let me take care of this ugly business.”

  “It’s my mission.”

  “No, actually it’s my mission. You quit the guard; quite spectacularly, in fact. I’m the one who received the mandate from Her Majesty and the Lord Chancellor. I’ll take care of rescuing the Prince.”

  “I let him go, and I’m going to get him back. That’s all there is to say on the matter.”

  “Willow …” Snyde started, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  She placed her hand over his, and Snyde actually started to smile for a moment before she applied the required pressure to send him to his knees, howling in agony.

  “Don’t try to stop me … Eric.” The irony was heavy in her voice. “None of you had better try to stop me,” she said, addressing the rest of the camp who had come to a stop at Snyde’s scream. “If you can remember only one thing, this is it: rescuing the Prince of Bryanae is my mission. You can help me, or you can get out of my way, but if you try to hinder me in any way, it will be the last thing you do in your sorry, pitiful lives.

  “This mission is my responsibility, my fault,” she said. “I lost the Prince, and I’m going to get him back, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  Chapter 48

  Rain. Just terrific. If the gods existed, they evidently thought that Willow had been having too easy a time of late. Ooh, let’s make things a little more interesting with some rain!

  Although “rain” was too gentle of a word for it. Even “deluge” didn’t do it justice. No, the only word that could describe what the sky was doing to her marching column of solders was “assault.” They were besieged by rain. The sky was black with it. Swollen droplets pelted them like thousands of tiny rocks.

  There was something haunting about it, though. The smell, the sound, it reminded her of better times, of more innocent times. She had a vivid recollection of playing in the woods as a child, taking refuge from the rain in an impromptu lean-to, cuddling up next to Pyto-Etha and dozing. The sound of the rain was soporific and soothing then.

  Now it meant danger. It meant that visibility was limited. It meant that her band’s movement was impeded by the mud through which they slogged. It meant that their clothes were soaked through and made them susceptible to illness. It meant an increased risk of someone slipping and twisting an ankle.

  On the other hand, it made her mother miserable. So it was a mixed bag.

  Don-Lan’s new route led them through an orchard of some fruit Willow did not recognize. Had the sun been shining, the orchard might have been beautiful. Instead, it was a shivering, sloshing, stumbling, squishing, tripping obstacle course.

  Soldiers sputtered and grumbled behind her, barely audible above the rattling of the droplets against the leaves
and the ground. Willow could just barely discern Tamlevar’s stumbling figure through the haze of the rain: his steps were plodding and deep, for he carried Tee Ri upon his back. Willow couldn’t hear her over the rain, but no doubt she was blaming the rain on her.

  Thunder exploded all around them, deafening them in its wake. Then Snyde approached, and seemed to be shouting something. She shook her head, indicating that she couldn’t hear him. He leaned closer.

  “This is ridiculous!” he shouted into her ear, and still she could barely hear him. “We can’t keep this up! We’ll be sick and exhausted when we arrive and won’t be able to do anything useful!”

  “No,” she said. “We keep going.”

  He sighed and shook his head.

  Now Tamlevar was coming up through the ranks, temporarily bereft of his royal burden.

  Terrific.

  “We’ve got to stop!” Tamlevar said. “We need to get Her Majesty out of the rain!”

  That did it. Willow wheeled on Snyde. “You, back to your men. I don’t want to hear any more complaints from you.” Then she rounded on Tamlevar. “And as for you, I don’t care how tightly wrapped she has you around her finger, she is not in charge of this mission!”

  “Neither are you!” shouted Tamlevar. “You have no right to make her walk through these conditions. She’s your mother, by all that is pure!”

  Before she could stop herself, her hand sped through the air and slapped Tamlevar across the face. He looked at her incredulously for a moment, and then he wrapped his hands around her throat. The air was cut off from her lungs. She pounded his chest with her fist, but it was like punching stone. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he jammed her attack with his thigh.

  Snyde took a step back and drew his rapier. He shouted something that Willow could not hear. Tamlevar gave no indication that he had heard it, either. Pree-Var-Us ran to intervene, his arms flailing.

  Willow fell to her knees and Tamlevar stooped to maintain the pressure on her windpipe. Her heart thudded in her ears.

  There was another deafening explosion of thunder and more rain fell on her. Only when she looked at her arms that feebly clutched at Tamlevar’s, she noticed they were covered with blood.

  Tamlevar noticed too, and released her. She fell to the ground, gasping, her face pressing against the muddy earth.

  Pree-Var-Us fell down next to her. There was a pulpy mass of red where his face had been.

  Now the men were crouching, taking cover where they could. The rain continued to beat down on them. The rain was washing what was left of Pree-Var-Us’s face into the ground.

  Willow glanced quickly at Tamlevar to see if he were going to continue his assault, but he was too stunned by Pree-Var-Us’s death. She looked about, trying to determine who or what had killed him. Magic?

  No, not magic. At least, she didn’t think so. For there, in that cluster of trees, she saw that something had made a perfect half-circle through the side of one of the trees trunks. Willow leapt to her feet and sprinted towards that tree in a zigzag.

  As she neared the tree, she saw that behind it, there was other damaged foliage, some of it smoldering. It was as though a magical burning arrow had seared a path towards Pree-Var-Us’s head.

  The trail continued for another few feet, then stopped. A glint of golden metal caught her eye. She stooped and retrieved a small piece of shaped copper about the size of two of her fingers. She examined it closely, but its function eluded her. Was this connected to whatever had killed Pree-Var-Us? It would be an odd coincidence otherwise.

  She looked up, quickly, suddenly concerned there might other enemies about her. Sure enough, the bushes behind her parted but then Tamlevar crawled through. Their eyes met.

  “Don’t even—” she started, but he interrupted her.

  “I’m not!” He showed his open hands to her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  She knew perfectly well what had come over him: her mother. Tee-Ri had been filling his head with lies and half-truths all day, poisoning him against her.

  She shook her head. “I think our enemies have a new weapon,” she said. She showed him the copper artifact she had discovered.

  “That? That killed Pre-Var-Us?” he said. “You can’t be serious.”

  Willow shrugged. She stood, heedless of the danger, and walked back towards the others.

  And then the storm finally began to recede.

  Terrific. Just terrific.

  Chapter 49

  Willow rolled the metal object around in her hand as they marched. Its irregular, part-smooth, part-hollow design seemed alien and offensive; as though some fundamental law or treaty had been broken. Who would make such a weapon? And why reveal its secret by using it on a barely-functional band of elven rebels?

  The rain died away about the same time as they left the groves and entered the meadows. From there on, the green was a different shade: brighter, more cheerful. The very essence of joy that radiated from these grassy hills set Willow’s teeth on edge. It was a cloying, insistent happiness and it was a liar.

  They continued to march across the meadows and up and down hills. Then upon cresting one final hill, she stopped and gasped.

  “Oh no,” she whispered, her hand to her chest.

  Snyde and Tamlevar appeared at either side of her, looking with her at the building in the distance.

  It was a castle. The castle. The castle where Willow had been born and raised.

  At least two days’ journey from this spot, the various walls and parapets were visible even now. And somewhere therein, the Warlord Jabar awaited her like a spider in a web, defiling the very stones that her father had helped lay with his own hands.

  It had once been her father’s castle. Now it was his castle. It had been corrupted. The sight of it filled her with dread and loathing, and that she should feel this way about the legacy of her father was itself a defeat.

  “It’s grown,” she said, her voice trembling despite herself.

  “Yes, Waeh-Loh,” Tee-Ri said, smiling, as she joined them. “Welcome home. The Warlords have been busy preparing the castle for your return.

  Willow clenched her jaw. “Get her away from me, Tamlevar,” she said. “I’m warning you.”

  Tee-Ri smiled sweetly, but allowed Tamlevar to lead her back.

  It had grown, but in an odd manner. Whereas the original design had been symmetrical and practical, the additions seemed haphazard, almost random. Some seemed incomplete; in fact, wooden scaffolding still dotted sections of the stone building.

  Snyde was looking at the castle through that ridiculous monocle again. He whistled tonelessly through his teeth. “I wouldn’t want to lay siege to that.”

  She pointed at the castle, whose appearance at this distance defied all sense of scale. “That’s the place, Snyde. That’s where I’m going to die. I can feel it.”

  Snyde chuckled. “Since when have you become superstitious, Willow?”

  She shook her head. “Since I came home, I think.”

  * * *

  “We’ve arrived,” Don-Lan said.

  “Arrived where?” she said. They stood at the entrance to a large yard of earth and flowers. Rows of blue and red flowers stood as high as her thighs, waving, beckoning in the gentle breeze. “What is this place?”

  “More than it seems.” There was the faintest trace of a smile on his face. The fortitude of these elves astonished Willow. How could they smile after all they had been through? After losing Pree-Var-Us?

  Pree-Var-Us. She was stricken by the realization that it would be she who would have to inform that loon Sil-Then of his lover’s death. What would become of the poor, mad hope of the elven people? Could he even survive without the patient ministrations of Pree-Var-Us?

  “It’s Paeh-Men por Rule,” Tee-Ri called from the back. “It’s a graveyard. You would have known that if you had stayed instead of fleeing like a thief in the night.”

  Willow decided to let that one pass. “Don-
Lan, why have you brought us to a graveyard?”

  Don-Lan looked puzzled. “Pree-Var-Us didn’t tell you?”

  “Obviously not.”

  Don-Lan raised a finger, and then entered the field. “You don’t remember much magic at all, do you?”

  “I’ve never known any magic,” she said.

  “Waeh-Loh was never much of a student,” Tee-Ri said.

  “Go on, Don-Lan.”

  He knelt before a row of blue flowers, and then poked his fingers into the dirt. A seraphic smile spread across his face as though indulging in the most gratifying of sensual experiences. Then his elbows bent slightly, and he started to stand up. There was a creaking sound, and suddenly, it seemed as if the whole flowery meadow rose above the ground, leaving a dark chasm beneath it.

  “One of the entrances to our headquarters,” he said.

  Snyde was watching through his monocle, the one eye looking absurdly magnified in it. “I can’t believe my own eyes!”

  “You mean ‘eye,’ ” Willow muttered. “Perhaps if you got rid of that ridiculous monocle, you’d see better.”

  Snyde looked annoyed but said nothing.

  “You we expected to fool,” Don-Lan said. “You’re human, and see with human vision. But we weren’t expecting to fool her.”

  Willow felt her face grow warm. But how could she have learned elven magic? She had been so young …

  “Let’s go,” she grumbled, and descended into the darkness.

  Chapter 50

  The elves who had remained behind gathered to greet Willow and the return of her diminutive army. She could see on their faces that they were appalled at the losses she had sustained. Or rather, the losses others had sustained on her behalf. She was a complete failure as a leader.

  “Just lovely,” Tee-Ri said, dripping with sarcasm. “All the comforts of home. If I were a snake, that is.”

  “You mean you aren’t?” Willow muttered.

  Tee-Ri turned to Tamlevar. “Are you going to let her talk to me that way?”

  Sil-Then came forward, his hands raised in a benediction, his face all smiles. “I’m glad you were successful in your mission. But where is Pre-Var-Us?”